


Thursday's Thoughts: Mycroft

by Lunabell_Marauder_Knyte



Series: Thursday Series [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-04
Updated: 2012-10-04
Packaged: 2017-11-15 15:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/528703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunabell_Marauder_Knyte/pseuds/Lunabell_Marauder_Knyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel-ish moment to Thursdays Child. Mycroft visits John's grave and apologizes on his brothers behalf. "It was simpler for me to ignore than to confront my brother because I didn't wish to lose either of you. And in my selfishness I did nothing to help you, and you're dead now John. And I am sorry. I am so so very sorry."<br/>Like John in his final days, all Mycroft got was silence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thursday's Thoughts: Mycroft

On Mycroft's insistence Sherlock is kept under careful supervision. Mycroft had known about his little brother's infidelity but chose to ignore it. That didn't mean he didn't care about what was obviously happening to the ex military doctor. Despite that he too was a Holmes, and he was often quoted stating that 'Caring is not an advantage', he cared. Because this wasn't just anyone, it was John Hamish Watson. That man had somehow snuck into his life just as much as he had into Sherlock's. Instead of a lover, Mycroft gained another brother through bond.

It was all just simpler for him to ignore than confront his brother. Sherlock would make a mess of things and would have sent John away and Mycroft couldn't allow that. John was good for the Holmes brothers.

But in doing nothing...John had died.

And now it wasn't the situation that was a mess, it was Sherlock.

Mycroft did everything in his power to carefully monitor his brother through the stages of grief, because they did occur. Of course they would.

After the morning in which his men had taken John away Sherlock went numb after John's corpse was no longer in line of view. Once some of the numbness went away came denial. The two would mix regularly for weeks.

Unlike most people whose next step would be pain and guilt, Sherlock skipped right to anger. Oh how angry his brother had gotten. He was so very angry. At John for making him feel, for making promises of never leaving him, for not actually being sensible enough to leave and be alive  _somewhere_! Angry at John for not hating him and accepting him. He was angry at John for drying. Angry at the world for taking him away.

Angry at himself and all his faults. For his ignorance and neglect that he gave the ex military doctor which Mycroft was positive first placed John Hamish Watson on Death's path. For choosing for once to remain oblivious to the matter at hand and doing nothing to help John. He could have stopped it. All he had to do was pay attention like his nature called him to do.

Depression, pain, guilt, and bargaining were all a cluster that seemed to attack Mycroft's brother in intervals and at the same time. All of those came after the anger and seemed to have ironically crippled his brother.

It had already been a hassle to get Sherlock to eat but with John's...passing, it was nearly impossible. But he managed. Somehow.

It was actually pretty daunting at the times his usually stubborn and difficult brother would become very compliant. Those moments usually happened in his darkest moments.

Then the inevitable happened. Sherlock's stubbornness had returned in his own way of acceptance, or lack of their of. His brother was a brat, he was raised to be one. So it wasn't surprising to Mycroft that his brother would refuse to let something that was his go, and at one time he had let the entire world know that John Hamish Watson was his.

Sherlock would go into his mind palace and it was in those moments of sheer weakness that Mycroft realized what his brother was doing. Sherlock was in one of the many rooms in his mind palace with a nearly perfect replica of John and recreating their lives. One in which John is still alive and Sherlock is a better spouse.

His little brother would spend so much time in there that Mycroft would resort to using some of the drugs he swore he'd never let near his little brother. They were needed however because Sherlock would last nearly a month in his mind palace should he choose to.

Unfortunately for Sherlock but fortunately for Mycroft Sherlock's replica wouldn't, or rather couldn't, last forever.

With nearly a decade of basically avoiding each other, Sherlock trying to delete as much of the person who made him so human, of trying to delete John Hamish Watson, his replica of John only had so much sustenance before the fantasy faded and his brother was forced to return to reality. For he no longer remembered what shade of blonde John's hair was, or the right color of his blue eyes, or if he still had a tan, or if he still wore the same clothes or how his old clothes looked like for that matter.

In the passing of a loved one it is those memories we once thought of as silly that we helplessly, pathetically, desperately try to hang on to. To make them a permanent picture in our hard drives. At first they seem somewhat painful to remember but then, in times like this, it's all you have.

For his brother to have spent a decade deleting those from the past and ignoring those of their present...John is gone for good for his brother. For him and Anthea and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson a part of John remains, in their memories. Their own personal moments with the ex army doctor that Sherlock wasn't a part of. They could share but it wouldn't be fair and it wouldn't be right. They weren't Sherlock's memories to hold.

Lestrade was one of those who had invested too much in Sherlock to just sit back and do nothing. Maybe it wasn't for Sherlock at all. Maybe it was for John, or rather John's memories. John had done so much that letting Sherlock even trip was an insult to John. So Lestrade visited Sherlock whenever he could. By whenever Mycroft didn't just mean whenever the DI had free time. He also meant when the DI could tolerate looking at the man he once considered great. That image was long gone though. It disappeared when John had been in a car crash early in the years that the separation was happening and Sherlock hadn't visited, and probably doesn't even know to this day.

The first few visits were of an angry Lestrade berating a numb Sherlock. Lestrade made sure that the genius was listening to him and to everyone's astonishment, he was. With tears and pain in his eyes, his little brother listened.

After the anger passed Lestrade visited to make sure the genius wasn't doing anything stupid that would eliminate all of John's hard work. In one of the visits the DI had given Sherlock a picture of John.

Sherlock's eyes filled quickly with tears, anything relating John seemed to do that very easily these days, when he realized once more that he had no memory of that captured frozen moment in which John, his John, was genuinely happy. Happy and away from hiim.

Then it started.

Sherlock would talk to John's picture as if it were John himself much like he used to talk to that skull of his.

Mycroft worried for his brothers sanity, yes, but at that moment not his life. Which was what mattered at that point.

A year passes and Sherlock makes a request to move back into 221B Baker Street. A big part of him doesn't want to but that request was the most Sherlock had spoken to anyone who wasn't John's picture. He allowed his brother the request but now more than ever had surveillance on him and 221B ever been the most serious.

* * *

 

John had a will that ended up in Mycroft's possession since all of John's family was dead and Sherlock had lost interest. That was all that was left of the doctor. His final wishes. No note, no video, no picture, no last words to help any of them understand.

Even when his people told him it was a natural death a small part of his brain refused to accept that. There had to have been something. Something wrong, something not right, someone to blame, but really they could only blame themselves.

The wishes in the will weren't much but Mycroft made his bond brothers last wishes a reality.

John was to be cremated and his ashes spread over the Thames. Again there was no explanation other than a very short note in which John claimed that he had spent his whole life feeling like he was being suffocated and disliked the idea of his corpse rotting away in a box underground very much. Mycroft did his best to dig into the ex army doctors life to see what personal attachment he had to the Thames but it was difficult to say. And Mycroft had to come to terms that he would never know, because maybe it was some sort of mental ideal John had realized in his dark and quiet days which everyone else had ignored him.

Even though Mycroft completed John's final wishes the older Holmes still had a marker made in memory of John Hamish Watson. He had originally wanted to make something huge, lavish, expensive, and very impressionable but then remembered who this was in memory of and instead had a simple one done.

It was done in the most sturdy white stone money could buy with gold around the edges. There was no date of birth or death. No memorable quote or picture. Only a name, just a name: John Hamish Watson.

It didn't matter really, only to him. For only him and his people knew about this. No one else knew or would they know. He didn't trust his brother enough to not do something stupid to John's marker, and perhaps it was a bit selfish of him but he didn't care that it was a small something for him rather than anyone else. Talking with John when he had been alive always made a fuzzy situation clear.

It was just a nice sentiment for a friend and Mycroft really wanted a place to visit when he was lost.

It was on a cloudy day that Mycroft walked away from the government black car and towards the cemetery.

"Do you wish for me to stay here?" Anthea asked and he nodded.

He walked the short route to John's marker and stared at it. Sherlock had John's picture and Mycroft his marker.

"Hello John..."Mycroft was a sensible man with great intellect and little religious beliefs. And this is what a single man, a single ordinary ex army doctor of a man had reduced him to. Talking to a stone. A stone that didn't even have the man's rotting corpse beneath it. "Sherlock's returned to 221B. He misses you...he's so very sorry.

"I find it ironic really...at one point you had been the middle man for him and I and here I am...what am I doing here? Even I see the complete arrogance in thinking I have the power to try to fix what happened. I can't and for that and so much more I am sorry. Truly I am. He talks with a picture of you that Lestrade gave him. It was when you switched to treating children. You were very happy then...it wasn't a front. He's guilty. He's tried to live in his mind palace you know? Somewhere in there I believe he has a replica of 221B in which you are still there...still in love...still happy. And he...where he's actually there and you talk to him.

"But he can't stay in there forever. He's damned himself, the idiot. You made him care and it scared him. Instead of manning up and dealing with his feelings like an adult he ran from them. He ran from you. And this is where it ended. He can't relive his life with you because he's deleted everything. You're gone from him. The rest of us have memories of you that we hang on to with desperation and some of those are just ours and aren't meant to be shared.

"But then you look at him and he's so pathetic now...and he doesn't care," Mycroft chuckles to himself and twirls around his umbrella, "An ordinary man was the one to rid my brother of his pride...and all it took was your death.

"He makes Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson tell him everything of you. Show him pictures. But there are few. Even if the moments where there...the state you were in wasn't something anyone wanted to remember, especially in film. You were so weak and lost and...lifeless. But they tell him the details he wishes. The color of your hair, your eyes, the color of your most recent jumpers. You had some moments away from the silence and the darkness, maybe you were just trying to be brave for the rest of us and accidentally got lost in some good. Those are the moments they tell him about. It's the most pathetic when he stops them in the middle of the story and he nearly begs for them to go into deeper detail about you in that moment. The physical details, the metaphotical details...

"It really speaks volumes when Molly Hooper is the one he visits most because she's the one who saw you the most. She's the one who pities him now. Ironic, no how the tables have turn? She doesn't mind. She doesn't love him anymore, she long ago stopped. And I believe she's thankful to you and feels that she's in your debt. Poor girl was always a slave to her emotions. Sometimes I believe she feels guilter than Sherlock. Had it not been for you she would have wasted her life following behind my brother like a lost puppy. She's met a good normal man...and now she sits every day with Sherlock and now he's the one to pay inhumanly possible attention to her words as she tells him the last ten years of your life..."

The day is cold and cloudy and the cemetery is quiet and alone besides him and John's not even here. With pain in his own eyes Mycroft looks up at the sky and says, "I've never been a religious man but I hope with every ounce of humanity I have left that you can actually hear me John. I ask you even though it's not fair to you...for what happened, for how he treated you, it's unfair to even think of asking but please...watch over him. I know I don't deserve to ask and he much less deserves the kindness but...I am not you and only you were able to get through to that idiot of a brother of mine."

Mycroft stood in the empty cold cemetery where John wasn't buried on a cloudy and windy day and received nothing but silence.

He mentally sighed and made his way back to the car that awaited him. He knew not to expect anything but still he had tried. That dead ordinary man had done wonders for his brother and now he was gone, and with him the wonders themselves. John was given silence and that's what Mycroft was given today.

As he reached the gate though a beam of sunlight broke through and shined down on Mycroft and Anthea.

"Everything alright sir?" she asked.

A small grin breaking through he looked at his assistant and replied, "No. But I can't let that stop me can I?"

Anthea nodded knowingly and opened the door for him and then got in after him. They drove back to the city that needed them. Maybe later on their break they can talk about John. For that is how he lives on. Through rumors, through thoughts, through memory. John lives on, because he was more than ordinary. He was John Hamish Watson, the heart of London.


End file.
